"I shall be here—leastways, at Alnwick yonder, at t' Temp'rance—for two or three days yet, while I've collected some sheep together 'at I've bowt for our maister, on one farm and another," replied Beeman. "Then I shall be away. But if you ever want me, at t' 'Sizes, or wot o' that sort, my directions is James Beeman, foreman to Mr. Thomas Dimbleby, Cross-houses Manor, York."
When this candid and direct person had gone, the inspector looked at Miss Raven and me with glances that indicated a good deal.
"That settles one point and seems to establish another," he remarked significantly. "Salter Quick was not murdered by somebody who had come into these parts on the same errand as himself. He was murdered by somebody who was—here already!"
"And who met him?" I suggested.
"And who met him," assented the inspector. "And now I'm more anxious than ever to know if there is anything in that tobacco-box theory of Mr. Cazalette's. Couldn't you young people cajole Mr. Cazalette into telling you a little? Surely he would oblige you, Miss Raven?"
"There are moments when Mr. Cazalette is approachable," replied Miss Raven. "There are others at which I should as soon think of asking a question of the Sphinx."
"Wait!" said I. "Mr. Cazalette, I firmly believe, knows something. And now—you know more than you did. One mystery has gone by the board."
"It leaves the main one all the blacker," answered the inspector. "Who, of all the folk in these parts, is one to suspect? Yet—it would seem that Salter Quick found somebody here to whom his presence was so decidedly unwelcome that there was nothing for it but—swift and certain death! Why? Well—death ensures silence."
Miss Raven and I took our leave for the second time. We walked some distance from the police-station before exchanging a word: I do not know what she was thinking of; as for myself, I was speculating on the change in my opinion brought about by the rough-and-ready statement of the brusque Yorkshireman. For until then I had firmly believed that the man who had accosted our friend of the Mariner's Joy, Jim Gelthwaite, the drover, was the man who had murdered Salter Quick. My notion was that this man, whoever he was, had foregathered somewhere with Quick, that they were known to each other, and had a common object, and that he had knifed Quick for purposes of his own. And now that idea was exploded, and so far as I could see, the search for the real assassin was yet to begin.
Suddenly Miss Raven spoke.